Misinformation sharing and social media fatigue during COVID-19: An affordance and cognitive load perspective

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2020.120201Get rights and content

Highlights

  • We study social media use, fake news sharing and social media fatigue during COVID-19.

  • Self-promotion and entertainment increase the sharing of unverified information.

  • Exploration and religiosity correlate negatively with the sharing of unverified information.

  • Deficient self-regulation increases both fatigue and the sharing of unverified information.

Abstract

Social media plays a significant role during pandemics such as COVID-19, as it enables people to share news as well as personal experiences and viewpoints with one another in real-time, globally. Building off the affordance lens and cognitive load theory, we investigate how motivational factors and personal attributes influence social media fatigue and the sharing of unverified information during the COVID-19 pandemic. Accordingly, we develop a model which we analyse using the structural equation modelling and neural network techniques with data collected from young adults in Bangladesh (N = 433). The results show that people, who are driven by self-promotion and entertainment, and those suffering from deficient self-regulation, are more likely to share unverified information. Exploration and religiosity correlated negatively with the sharing of unverified information. However, exploration also increased social media fatigue. Our findings indicate that the different use purposes of social media introduce problematic consequences, in particular, increased misinformation sharing.

Keywords

COVID-19
Pandemic
Social media
Fatigue
Fake news
Misinformation

Cited by (0)

Dr. A.K.M. Najmul Islam is an Adjunct Professor at Tampere University, Finland. He is a Scientist in LUT University, Finland. He also works as University Research Fellow at the Department of Future Technologies, University of Turku, Finland. Dr. Islam holds a PhD (Information Systems) from the University of Turku, Finland and an M.Sc. (Eng.) from Tampere University of Technology, Finland. He has 80+ publications. His-research focuses on Human Centred Computing. His-research has been published in top outlets such as IEEE Access, European Journal of Information Systems, Information Systems Journal, Journal of Strategic Information Systems, Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Computers in Human behaviour, Journal of Medical Internet Research, Internet Research, Computers & Education, Information Technology & People, Telematics & Informatics, Journal of Retailing and Consumer Research, Communications of the AIS, Journal of Information Systems Education, AIS Transaction on Human-Computer Interaction, and behaviour & Information Technology, among others.

Samuli Laato is currently working as a project researcher and a Ph.D. student at University of Turku, Finland. After graduating as a master of software engineering in 2016 he has worked on several projects in the field of human-computer interaction involving educational games and online learning. His-recent research has been published in outlets such as the European Journal of Information Systems, Journal of Medical Internet Research, Research in Learning Technology, Educational Technology Research and Development and International Journal of Serious Games.

Dr. Shamim Talukder is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Management, North South University, Bangladesh. He received Ph.D. degree major in Management Science and Engineering from the School of Management, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, China and MBA in Management Information Systems from the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh. His-teaching and research interests include Human-Computer Interaction, Mobile Computing, IoT in Healthcare, Wearable Technology for social care, the impact of social media uses and e-government/open data. His-research has been published in journals such as Industrial Management and Data Systems, Technology in Society, Journal of Systems and Information Technology, and Foresight. He also serves as a reviewer for many top-tier peer-review journals.

Dr. Erkki Sutinen is Professor of Computer Science (Interaction design) at the University of Turku since 2015. He moved to Namibia in 2019 to set up the first overseas campus of University of Turku, located currently at the premises of University of Namibia, in its main campus in Windhoek. Erkki got his PhD from University of Helsinki in 1998, based on his research in string algorithms. In 1999–2015, he was a professor at University of Eastern Finland (1999–2009 University of Joensuu) where he founded a research group in educational technology, hosting an online PhD program impdet.org. In 2010–12, he was the chief technical advisor of the 22 M€ STIFIMO science, technology and innovation program in Mozambique. Erkki has been researching educational technology, Computing education, ICT4D, and co-design. He has supervised circa 30 PhDs and co-authored around 300 papers. As an ordained Lutheran priest, his current interests include digital theology.

This article belong to the special section on Social-Economic Impacts of Epidemic Diseases.

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